The Wolf of Wall Street

It’s not that often that too big award seasons films come out in the same year that are so similar, but  this year it happened with American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street, both heavily feature the American Dream, although both taken from the criminal side of that dream. While there were significant differences between the two films, nothing was so significantly different as to the gulf in quality between those two films.

The basic plot follows Jordan Belfort (Leonardo Di Caprio) when he joins a stockbrockers a short period before the wall street crash that occurred in the mid 1980’s. Following that he sets up his own firm, selling penny shares to regular people. Needless to say some of the firms actions aren’t legal, something that attracts the eagle eyes attention of the FBI.

The film revolves around Di Caprio’s Belfort, a man who is self admittedly obsessed with money and classes it as his biggest addiction, when you see just how badly he is addicted to other substances you realise just how big of statement this is. How much he changes or evolves throughout the film is hard to say, as he is driven by greed mainly and is much more interested in having as good a time as is physically possible. There are points that stand out as some of Di Caprio’s best work, more often than not, these are comic moments. The highlight being the quaalude scene toward the end of the film, which combines great physical comedy and perfectly delivered voice over. It’s hard to make cerebral palsy funny, but they pull it off here.

Belfort is never played sympathetically, as he has numerous chances to do the right thing, but instead decides to continue his course of money, sex and drugs. Di Caprio, Scorcese and Terence Winter deserve credit for trying to make him interesting and charismatic as opposed to immediately likeable, as a result the film benefits from this.

The film is excessive, a hard eighteen, which had to be cut to make that rating. With a film this explicit, you have to ask if it’s justified and needed. While they could have done without some of the shots, it would have lessened the world and the characters, as we wouldn’t see them acting how they truly are, no matter how crazed and out of control they are. More out of control than the actions, is the language, which ranges from mildly offensive to machine gun like speed of four letter word insults. The line that demonstrates this is when one of the brokers sees an attractive woman and comments, “I’d let her give me AIDS”. I think that sums up the kind of language you should expect.

The film is three hours long, but unlike recent films that clock up that kind of run time, this one doesn’t feels its length. The final half hour slows down as the severity of the situation begins to tell on Belfort and the rest of the characters. But by then you are so engrossed and involved in these people that another hour would have flown past.

Scorcese and Winter here have combined to create a truly great film and possibly Scorcese’s best in the last decade. It takes a very serious subject and makes it different to what it would have been in  the hands of a lesser calibre of writer/director team. To put it into context, this film could easily form a loose kind of trilogy with Casino and Goodfellas, albeit with different enterpretations of the American dream and organized crime, with The Wolf of Wall Street using Wall Street as the criminals instead of mobsters.

Don’t be put off by the length or the apparent seriousness of the subject matter. Go and experience one of the funniest (albeit darkly comic) and best made films of the year.

Director: Martin Scorcese

Writer(s): Terence Winter (screenplay) and Jordan Belfort (book).

Sequel Bait

They largely dominate the cinemas between late April and early September, filling the large screen with another instalment in a series that made a lot of money or was very well received, sometimes even both, but more often than not it comes down to the previous films box office.

The biggest criticism with sequels is that they show a lack of originality and imagination, for the most part this is a fair arguments, a fair majority of them exist solely to cash in, such as the Saw series or the later Terminator films. It’s true that these films do take away from the more original summer films that come along every couple of years, or the smaller films that populate awards season, taking up screens and distributors or studios money, because these sequels are a safer bet.

But not all sequels are purely money grabbing, vacuous rubbish, one of the greatest films of all time is a sequel, I am talking about The Godfather Part II, which carried on the story of Michael Corleone from the first film, building upon it whilst also bringing back decisions and plot threads from the first film, mainly the answer he gives to his wife at the very end. Also 2010’s Toy Story 3 was a fitting finale to that great series, taking us and it’s characters on an emotionally draining and simultaneously uplifting journey, completing the story of these loveable toys.

But in recent years we have seen further instalments in a film franchise move backwards into a prequel such as Prometheus or Hannibal Rising or sideways into a sidequel(?) such as The Bourne Ultimatum, both of which have their own good points and bad points. The prequel offers the chance to go back and spend time with characters who stories either finished, were left ambiguous or died. But the risk is that something has to be changed, or a something omitted that could damage the original.

With a sidequel you face a similar scale of problems, the good points are that it allows you to add to the world that was already created in the first film(s), and bring in new characters and even show the affect that the original had on the wider world. But the problem is that you may not have the main characters from the original and risk the audience asking why they should bother to see it, when they have no emotional attachment to these people.

A film that did the prequel idea well(at least in my view) was Prometheus, choosing to go back and focus on the Space Jockey, a character that is only seen briefly in Alien, but which forms the basis for this film. Going back thirty years before the original, we know we aren’t going to get to see Ripley or Dallas, most of them haven’t been born or are very young, so we meet a new cast of characters and follow them as they search for these Engineers/Space Jockeys. The film is also careful not undermine anything from the original, instead only loosely linking it with Alien through one outcome of the finale, while the main conclusion sets up to take a sequel into a different place entirely.

A film that attempted the sidequel was the very recent The Bourne Legacy, the review of which should be just below this article, which showed the affects that The Bourne Ultimatum had on this world. It was a good idea and attempt but never seemed too linked with the other film, which some people may like, but it would have been good to see even more of the affects of what Jason Bourne, especially with the political side and what conversely affects Aaron Cross’s actions had on that world going on, as that side of story never really felt developed enough.

There are always films that wish had sequels, so that we could either spend more time with the characters or just enjoy the world that they live in. For me, a few examples of this would be Inception, The Departed and Blade Runner. The reasons for choosing these three, is that they all left me with the same question, “What happens next?” One of them offers a fairly ambiguous ending, the other a very traditional type of ending and the last asks one of the most fiercely debated questions in cinema.

What is the likelihood of seeing any of these films get a sequel? Well at least one in three at the moment, as Ridley Scott (along with original screenwriter Hampton Fancher) are working on a sequel to Blade Runner. While there were rumours of sequel to The Departed (that in it’s self based on the Infernal Affairs trilogy from Hong Kong) about a year after it’s release, nothing has happened in the last five years and it looks less likely that it will. Finally, the closest we will probably ever get to a sequel to Inception from Christopher Nolan at least, is going to be in a video game, something he himself has talked about doing.

With the difficulty of producing a sequel for these films becoming evident, it highlights the completeness of the films themselves, whereby a second film is not necessary as everything we need to know plays during the film. But for the sake of a bit of fun, let’s try and imagine a sequel to each of these films. Spoliers from here on out. With Blade Runner, I will detail the few bits and pieces of news that have come out (believe at your risk). Firstly, it will feature a female protagonist and that Deckard may or may not appear, but Scott has said that he would like Ford to return, how likely that is to happen, I don’t know. If they go this way they will probably have to answer the “Is Deckard a replicant?” question, which I would prefer not to have answered.

For my own idea, a film focusing on the Tyrell company would be interesting, especially considering how powerful it is and the state that it would be left in after the climax of the first film. Blade Runner offers us a complete world, one that is full of ideas and people that could be developed into a film that is as interesting as the first. One suggestion would be to minimise Deckards role (if they do use him) and set it shortly after the originals end, so we don’t have to answer that question.

I know that The Departed is based upon the first film in trilogy, but as I haven’t seen any of the original trilogy I will try and put forward a reasonably interesting idea of my own. At the end of the first film, all but two or three of the significant characters are dead, so this poses an interesting problem as you are faced with carrying over the story, but with hardly anyone left to continue the plot threads on. The storylines left were about Dignum (Wahlberg) and what he does after he kills Colin (Damon), there is also Madolyn (Farmiga) and her child. While the child storyline is nothing more than secondary plot thread, following Dignum, especially in the way he was portrayed would certainly be engaging, but a man on the run, which is presumably what he would be doing, can only fill so much time. But I would like a film that looks at the fallout of the events of the first film, as no doubt a lot of questions would be asked after everything that happened and someone would have to go in and sort out the mess and with only a few people who knew the truth alive that would prove difficult, but with those characters also having done questionable things and possibly not wanting to come forward, there is a lot of conflict to get through both in terms of plot and character.

With Inception, the final shot asks us to make our own mind up about where Cobb (DiCaprio) is and it was a great way for Nolan to end the film. So how do you get another film out of this world? I have two, or albeit brief ideas. The first is a prequel, not based around Cobb or any of the team from the first film, the only character who could appear is maybe Miles (Caine) but played by a younger actor, which would follow the development and breakout of the dream technology and the PASIV machine in particular from the military where it was developed. As the technology is still new at this point, faults and weaknesses with the technology would play into the use of it and as a result create the danger for someone using the machine.

The second idea would act as a sidequel, another job in the same world, but completely unrelated to the first film. One criticism of the first was that the dream world was too real, a pointless criticism when the team are trying to ensure that the mark doesn’t know he is dreaming initially, as well the world being two rigid and filled with hotels and skyscrapers, all solid structures, but again that is linked to the mind of the mark, a businessman. To change this, the mark could be someone of a creative disposition, whose mind would be more fluid and potentially Salvador Dali-esque.

Only brief ideas explained in broad strokes, some are not as interesting as others and more than likely, none will ever happen. But we will still be left with the entertaining and enjoyable originals that built worlds that we can continue on in our minds.